Delight Springs

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Why Baseball Matters

Just finished one of the smartest books on baseball I've come across in a long time, or maybe even ever: Why Baseball Matters, by Susan Jacoby.

She is indeed the Susan Jacoby, of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularismsuch a hit this past semester in our Atheism course. Add another name to the Church of Baseball register.

Her point in this book is not simply to praise our favorite game but to raise a red flag of concern for its future, in an age that rewards inattention and distraction and discourages continuous (though relaxed) concentration. She understands how true baseball appreciation requires sustained focus, a willingness to notice how much is happening both on the playing field and in the annals of institutional memory when casual semi-observers are sure "nothing is happening" in the game unfolding before them.
My concerns about the future of baseball—a $10 billion sport enjoying an unprecedented era of financial success and labor peace-are not based on misplaced nostalgia for a "pure" game that never existed. They are based on the dissonance between a game that demands and depends on concentration, time, and memory and a twenty-first-century culture that routinely disrupts all three with its vast menu of digital distractions.
Just look around, the next time you're in a ballpark: how many spectators are actually watching the game? How many are instead texting, watching other games in other places via smartphone, playing video games on that same dumb "smart" device? If you're in my town, Nashville, how many are playing shuffleboard or engaging in some other irrelevant diversion in the right field grandstand, backs turned constantly to the field? How many are seated, watching the game while conversing with family and friends? How many people under 30 are even there at all?

It's depressing, but Jacoby's a meliorist with constructive suggestions for how the great pastime can reclaim its rightful place. Most important is for those of us who love it to "make an effort to show the young why we love the game and why they might love it too if they surrendered themselves, as an experiment, to time uninterrupted by clocks and clicks... One kid at a time, one adult at a time."

So for my part, I'll continue to track participation in my classes with a baseball scorecard. Least I can do.

2 comments:

  1. Dr. Oliver,

    I'm glad that you enjoyed the book. A week or so ago, I read an article in our local paper, The Daily News Journal, that related to the decline in attendance and I thought of Jacoby's observations. There are many changes that have occurred since I first began following baseball and cheering for a team. Black athletes were few, Hispanics were rare, and smart phones were non-existent. I'm not sure what can be done to lure a younger generation(s) back to the stadiums or to following the games even on TV. They need someone to relate to and they need to be prepared to devote time to the game. I had those players to follow and they generally stayed with one team. Today, a player I like might be traded tomorrow to a team I don't like and vice versa. As far as changing the structure of the game to make it more appealing, the question is appealing to whom? If you want a faster game, you could change it to three strikes and you're out and three balls and you're on and a tied game at the end of nine innings has two additional innings to break the tie or it ends in a tie and counts as 1/2 win. The only exception being a playoff game. Also, they could expand the playoff series to a minimum of eight teams, that would keep the fans in those cities interested longer during the regular season and into the post-season. If you want more offense, you could move the pitcher's mount back and that would give the hitters more time to make a decision. Also, it would reduce the number of strikeouts. If you want to help school children learn the metric system, you could change the dimensions to the metric system and that would create a whole new dialogue - "Out by a millimeter." To encourage more people to come, they are going to have to be creative and provide incentives for people to come and in many families with both parents working and the children either home alone or in some form of day care, it will be difficult to get them to the stadium and most parents would be concerned about them being somewhere unsupervised. It's a real challenge. If you have any thoughts, you can send them to Robert D. Manfred Jr., Commissioner
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